Horsa vs Hadrian, an unusual choice.

Anyone else find it odd that Relic chose the Airspeed Horsa as the Glider in CoH2? In CoH1, the Glider of choice was the American built CG-4A, named Hadrian in British Service. It worked because the Hadrian was a fairly compact Glider, it only seated 13 not including Pilots, though they could also carry Pack Howitzers and crew.

The Horsa was a very large Glider with seating for 30, compared to the 13 seater Hadrian. In-game the Glider only delivers 4-5 troops, which is less than even the 8 seater Hotspur, which was only used for training. The Horsa is the largest "unit" in CoH beating out the Hamilcar from CoH1 (which was shrunken down considerably), the Jagdtiger is the size of one wing! The only thing longer is the unused Soviet "Steam Train" in CoH2. As the Horsa is the size of a small territory point, this makes it impossible to land without damage, and very easy to spot. When it "dies" it bursts into several dozen gibs, dirtying up the map and causing lag for some players.

The Hadrian in comparison would have made more sense for small troop drops, and gameplay wise would be easier to land and not scatter a million gibs everywhere on death. In the end I have to wonder why they chose such a massive Glider in a smaller Glider would be easier on both players and their computers.



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the horsa glider was picked probably because they can reuse it if they want to include airdropp tank like the tetrach.

the horsa glider was picked probably because they can reuse it if they want to include airdropp tank like the tetrach.

Actually the Hamilcar would be needed to bring in a Tetrarch or M22 Locust. The Horsa was the standard glider used by Airlanding battalions to bring in the majority of their manpower and equipment. A battalion had 62 Horsa gliders and a single Hamilcar for their transports. A single Horsa was enough to bring in an entire Airlanding platoon (27 men in total, glider's max capacity was 28 men plus the pilots). When they did an assault they wanted to land an entire platoon at once, so that an officer and second-in-command was with every glider and could lead them on the spot, rather than needing to regroup with an officer that landed in another glider (which might have landed far away, or not landed intact at all).

So while it does look odd when a Horsa lands and only 5 Commandos step out (not to mention that Commandos didn't land in gliders, but Relic did this is in CoH1 and they don't seem interested in correcting that mistake in CoH2... but at least CoH2 Commandos actually have a Commando uniform, and not Airborne now ), it's at least the historically correct glider for air drop operations.